Harpoon in Cans
Another large craft brewery goes to cans
Yet another brewery is joining the ranks of those who are canning beer. Harpoon Brewery is now canning two of their beers, the I.P.A. and the Summer Beer.
The beer, which was brewed at Harpoon’s Windsor, VT brewery, is being canned at FX Matt in Utica, NY.
It’s interesting to see more of the larger craft breweries turn to cans these days. I’m guessing we’ll see more and more of this size brewery adding cans to their line-up.
Great news, and about time.
Cans are an ideal container for beer, and it is great to have more and more top drawer beers finding their way into this kind of packaging. If I were purchasing a beer I like and there’s a choice between bottle and can, the cans win hands down. As far as supposed flavor taints, I think they are just in the imagination of the naysayers.
This is long overdue, and some credit goes to BALL for their part in this new development, and for helping to make cans more accessible to smaller brewers. Very forward thinking of them.
This is definitely a very good thing.
Hear Here. What Luskas said. Credit also to Cask, who took Ball to task.
Yeah, but in this case, it’s not really a Cask/Ball created “craft brewery micro-canning beer” situation- it’s something somewhat new and AFAIK not previously done (?). Harpoon is shipping finished beer in bulk to F. X. Matt, which has been canning their beers since the 1930’s- altho’ they do have a new canning department after their fire of a few years ago now.
Is this the first time that particular canning method’s been done? Matt themselves shipped beer (mostly Utica Club, I assume) to Genesee in Rochester after the fire, but this seems to be the first craft brewed > old line brewery canned deal. Lots of contract brewing deals, of course, but this situation might mean more business for the few pre-craft era breweries that are still canning AND avoids some beer geeks’ prejudice against contract brewed craft beer.
How are they legally allowed to ship bulk beer for repackaging?